"Why, my boy, you're the quickest worker I ever saw; I thought the Egghead knew his business, but he's a babe, a suckling to you!"
"Mimi Lafontaine is the damnedest little flirt I ever met," said the Egghead, with a slash of his whip which sent the buggy careening on two wheels.
"Hold on there!" said Turkey, grabbing the reins. "I've got to live another week. Well, Skippy, my hat's off to you, old sporting life. You've got her feeding out of your hand. . . And Mimi too, right under the Egghead's eye!"
"Oh, come off now, Turkey," said Skippy, to whom this light badinage was torture.
"Shucks!" said the Egghead, "you know her game."
"Well you played a pretty slick game yourself, old horse, but how did you enjoy Miss Biggs?"
"You go chase yourself," said the Egghead, flinging the remnants of a cream puff at the horse, which kept Turkey busy for the next five minutes.
Skippy scarcely heard. All he wanted was to have the drive over and to be alone with his memories. How bold he had been at the end when he had crushed her little hand in his! Had she understood—and just what had she meant when she had said,
"And so it's Jack and Mimi now, isn't it?"
That night at precisely 10.45 in his sixteenth year, hanging out of the second story window of the Kennedy, with a soul above mosquitoes, Skippy Bedelle discovered the moon.